Live music listings: May 2007Roll the mouse over the dates on the calendar below to see who's playing, then click on the date for the full listing and ticket info.Click on the mailing list link to your left there and enter your email address and we'll let you know, at the start of every week, who's playing in the next seven days and for how much, and leave you to peruse the full listings here at your liberty and leisure.
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Mon 7th The Luminaire OLLABELLE + The Epstein + Guests
Doors 7.30 "Ollabelle came together because of their love of this music, without thought of success or career or any of the other trappings of the modern professional music business. It has great value to our culture, adding new life to a tradition that is an important part of who we are. But mostly, they sound great. They sing great and they play great, and they are wonderful people." [T-Bone Burnett] Ollabelle are a six-piece, New York City-based band that celebrates rural American roots music, as well as the joys of group singing, named in honor of country singer and songwriter Ola Belle Reed. They mix traditional songs (including 'Jesus on the Mainline', 'Soul of a Man' and 'John the Revelator') with originals, the latter sounding every bit as timeless as the former. Lead singer Amy Helm has had no shortage of exposure to honest music, her father being Levon Helm of The Band and the song she leads wrap themselves in spare and acoustic simplicity, embracing unobtrusively electric blues and funky gospel. Singing over a pulsing rhythm section or an organ-based combo, Helm sounds strikingly (and surprisingly) like Julie Driscoll (later Tippett), who fronted Trinity with Brian Auger in the 1960s. A collection of songs of hard times, loss, compassion and hope" is how Fiona McBain describes 'Riverside Battle Songs', Ollabelle's second album and Verve Forecast debut. The 13-song set finds the New York quintet building upon the foundation of its self-titled 2004 debut, drawing from a deep well of gospel, blues, bluegrass, and country influences to create timelessly resonant music that honors the integrity of its sources while remaining effortlessly contemporary.
A multitalented, democratic collective whose participants share vocal and songwriting duties, Ollabelle gains strength from its members' shared sense of mission, as well as their diverse musical and personal backgrounds. Although the group initially began as a casual sideline to the musicians' individual projects, it quickly evolved into a fulltime creative entity with an unmistakable life of its own. |
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